Yes, that’s the ending unless you want to go hunt legendary animals or dinosaur bones or whatever the hell other things Arthur left undone.

Butch:

Well, he didn’t go get freaky with Mary, but I doubt you can go back and do that, so I’m done.

We actually did a plan!

Safe travels. Remember to check your pockets for random cosmetics.

Feminina:

I cleared the nail polish from my pocket this morning. I’m ready.

Just a couple more meetings and a dash to the airport. It’s gonna be great.

[later]

Butch:

We back? Can I complain now?

Feminina:

Back! 97% booze-free!

Let the complaints begin!

For example…what the hell? Dutch has been chillin’ behind the scenes with Micah the whole time? Apparently? And then he just…saunters off?

Now it seems that Dutch is one of the people John has to hunt down in Red Dead 1, so clearly he did have to be alive at the end of this. And maybe there’s some sort of ambiguity in their relationship in that one, like John isn’t sure whether he likes or hates his old gang leader, and so they had Dutch save John here because otherwise it would just be a matter of “well, obviously he hates him.”

I don’t know. That’s the best explanation I can think of for why it was in any way necessary or desirable to randomly toss Dutch in here.

But you go, you finished more recently than I did.

Butch:

Oh, you’re good. That’s pretty much where I would have started as well.

Cuz yeah! What WAS all that? He barely had any lines! He’s out there, all this money, freezing his ass off….why didn’t he spend the money? HE HAD THE MONEY! In the end…what…his grand plan was “I’ll get the money, then live in a cold assed out house with it with this traitor until someone I know shows up so I can shoot the traitor and abandon the money?” TAHITI MADE MORE SENSE!!!!

What was he doing up there? Why’d he shoot Micah? It’s not like John was all “Dude! It was him! He was the traitor all along! I can prove it! Here’s the proof!” No, it was just “Dutch! Don’t! I’m a nice guy oh thanks you shot Micah we good.”

AND THEN HE SAUNTERS OFF LEAVING THE MONEY BEHIND AND I CAN’T EVEN.

Usually, there’s nothing cheesier than a mustache twirling “now that you have found my lair I shall tell all” monologue, but I would have killed for one here. Two, actually! We never DID find out why Micah sold them out in the first place, did we? Nope.

But I got more to be mad about!

That trudge up the mountain. That. Trudge.

Game, if you’re going to have a big, exciting, climactic thing with music and shouting and action, DO NOT MAKE IT A TRUDGE THROUGH THE FUCKING SNOW. And game, DON’T KILL ME OVER AND OVER SO THAT IT BREAKS THE MOMENTUM!

But wait, there’s more, and now it’s irony:

Hey game? I watched the credits. You know all those little vignettes I saw? Things like finding out Pearson has a shop now? Tilly seemed happy in St. Denis? Mary Beth is a writer? That stuff? The stuff with the Pinkertons finding John and setting up the next/first game? Good stuff. I liked that stuff. You know what that stuff is?

THAT STUFF IS A FUCKING EPILOGUE!!!!! THAT!!! NOT ALL THIS OTHER STUFF!!!!

And a rant about the actual epilogue, that is, the scenes in the credits:

And after all this shit….who gets the last word? Is the last scene Arthur, the, you know, MAIN CHARACTER OF THE GAME? No. We see his grave, Mary, ok, nice. But it’s not last. No.

Is it Dutch? Another huge character? Nope. He just saunters off.

Maybe Sadie? Setting up the next game? We should be so lucky.

Nope. It’s Rain Falls.

Rain. Falls.

Not that I don’t like Rain Falls, but game, HE WAS NOT A MAIN CHARACTER OF THE GAME!!! He wasn’t even IN the “epilogue!!!!” WHY IS THE LAST IMAGE OF THE GAME RAIN FALLS?????

I can’t even.

This game somehow managed to have BOTH the best video game ending I’ve ever seen and the worst. I have to respect that. It’s like narrative quantum mechanics.

Ok, your turn.

Feminina:

YES!

What the hell, game? You’re so right. THAT was Dutch’s plan?

I mean, “let the gang tear itself to pieces, get all the money myself…” OK, that COULD be a plan.

But then “hang out in the freezing mountains with Micah for ‘some years’ not ENJOYING any of the money”…that doesn’t sound like you, Dutch.

And then, what? “You know, I’m kind of tired of Micah. And John’s worked hard. I’ll just shoot Micah and let John have the money while I wander into the mountains.”

WHATever, man. Baffling nonsense.

Ooh, ooh, here’s the only thing that really does make any sense: Dutch was somehow under Micah’s sway, the same way the gang was under his for so long! Micah had Dutch convinced that he had a plan (probably Tahiti) and they just needed “a little more money”!

And then when John showed up and everyone else was dead Dutch suddenly realized that he’d put his faith in the wrong person, just like Arthur realized that about him ‘some years’ ago, and he killed Micah FOR ARTHUR. Because he’s finally wrapping up Arthur’s loose end.

And then he walked off into the mountains because he was FINALLY ashamed of himself.

Only problem with this interpretation is that there’s literally nothing in the game to support it. As you say, could have used a couple of villain monologues.

And YES! THAT was an epilogue! I liked that epilogue! It was nice to see what people were doing and where they ended up and so forth! Good times! All the information we needed conveyed in neat little scenes that DID NOT INVOLVE ANY RANCH CHORES.

That’s how it’s done, game. You KNOW how it’s done! You can obviously do it! WHY DIDN’T YOU DO IT EARLIER?

I was also a bit puzzled by the fact that Rain Falls was the last person we saw. I mean, I liked him too, but as you say he wasn’t a central character. I suspect it was probably a well-intended nod to the fact that hey, native folks are still here today, and also maybe a hint that his hope that he could keep his people alive was not unfounded, and even a vaguely feel-good bit of “don’t be too sad about all the land-grubbing , murderous white settlement on the shoulders of which the country was founded, ’cause at least this dude here is still alive.”

Hm. I’m not really sure how I feel about that.

Butch:

I mean, maybe the takeaway was that Dutch never really wanted to leave the outlaw life? He does say (you know, back in the real game) that he spent his whole life “fighting change.” Maybe, even with the money, he just couldn’t get past having a big ol’ gang of dudes, robbing and stuff, living that life. Maybe, we’re supposed to think, that this proves that, to Dutch, lifestyle was always more important than money, that all that “We can’t stop cuz we don’t have the money” was just an excuse to not stop.

Maybe. I don’t know. I’m trying, here.

But the wandering off… Like….what? Did I miss some line of dialog? What did John do to change his mind?

And, if we want to go there, if the first game was John hunting down Dutch, why’d he let him go? There’s Dutch, wandering off, back to John, and John’s thinking, what? “Yeah, I could kill you now, but I’m just gonna let you go….spend fifty or so hours tracking you down in between collecting cigarette cards and going to vaudeville shows. Yup. Too easy to just shoot you now. You’re lucky this is a prequel, Dutch!”

It sure could have used some monologues. Still doesn’t answer the question of why did Micah sell everyone out in the first place. A good reason to sell everyone out would be to have them all die or get arrested, take the treasure and run. A strange reason to sell everyone out would be to get the treasure, convince your boss you did not, in fact, sell him out so you could go live in a frozen outhouse with him gazing at a box full of money you’ll never spend, waiting for someone to hear you’re there so he can shoot you. That’s a strange reason.

And yet, that’s all I got.

As for the ACTUAL, epilogue, Amen, sister. Preach. Though I did want to say “Hey Pearson? Dude. I get it. Those were good times. But maybe, just spitballin’ here, it might be a bad idea to hang a picture of yourself with, like, eight dudes who are wanted dead or alive and/or killed by law enforcement in your place of business.”

Though it was a nice bit of metaphor that everyone who ran away from Dutch, who broke the spell and realized that he was not going to lead them to anything good, turned out really well. Pearson was happy. Mary Beth was wearing a fancy dress and using a silver ink well. John was happy. Tilly was dressed all nice and had, we assume, a husband and child.

If Dutch really is the metaphor I thought he was (and frankly, I don’t know what to think anymore), then that’s a pretty gutsy final statement to the game.

If. Maybe. Who knows. I sure want it to be.

And even if that was what they were doing with Rain Falls, that isn’t what the game was about. Arthur, fading away, watching the sun rise on a day he will not see? Good metaphor. Metaphor consistent with the game. Minor character watching an eagle that obviously represents his son EAGLE FLIES fly away, sad that his family and way of life are ending….ok…metaphor consistent with the game, but we HAD THAT ALREADY with, you know, the MAIN CHARACTER.

If you want to put in a nod to native folk and the struggles they have and all that, fine. But as the very last thing you do in a game that isn’t really about that? What?

If that was, I dunno, the second or third scene, then that’s one thing. But what you put last matters, and this was a very strange choice to put last.

It’s so maddening, cuz, I’ll say it again, had they ended the game with Arthur’s death, had the credits (with Arthur’s grave being last), then that’s the best game ending I’ve seen in a long, long time.

But they didn’t do that.

Ironically, game endings are usually bad because they’re lazy. Pat. Developers know that only about a third of people finish, so they get lazy with endings. Kill the baddie, done. This game worked its ass off to ruin its own ending.

Sigh.

Feminina:

It did! People worked really, really hard on that baffling, nonsense, momentum-ruining ending that came after the very good ending they probably just threw together one night while drunk and didn’t realize was good. (Just kidding. I’m sure they worked very hard on that one too.)

Sometimes you just gotta know when to quit.

So in summary? I’m not sorry I played that game, but I am sorry I had to play it for quite as long as I did. It contained a lot of interesting themes and characters and lots of blog-worthy moments. And then a lot of “what the hell.”

But I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I might, so…win, I guess.

Butch:

I think win. I would have enthusiastically said win after the real ending, though. But this game is going to leave such a bad last impression…..

I think that, if we’re gonna blog on it, this is an important lesson for developers: endings matter. The last impression you have of a game is the lasting one. Shit, John and Arthur are so similar, I’m having trouble remembering details about Arthur, and that’s bad.

It’s something that has to be said, though, in games: endings matter. You don’t have to say it to other narrative forms, because far more than 30% of everyone gets to the end of a movie or a book or a play. If you’re writing one of those, of course you perfect the ending. You know everyone’s gonna get there, and you know that their last memory of it is going to matter.

Games just have to cater more to that 30%.

It sure does feel, though, that games that expect more people to finish them care more about endings. The real punchy endings I can remember from games of yore tend to be shorter ones. TLOU. Great ending. 20 hour game. Gone Home: the triumph of knowing the young lovers were gonna go be young lovers. Great stuff. And THAT’S in a non linear game! A short non linear game. I guess you figure that, when you make a six hour game, or a twenty hour game, more people are gonna finish it.

Still, endings. They matter. And if you’re not going to get them right, at least let it be because you just didn’t do it right, not that you did and you sabotaged it.

Feminina:

Well…I mean, yeah, I’m totally with you, endings matter and games should think about the people who actually finish games, etc. But who the hell was that ‘epilogue’ for if not the people who actually finish games? And we hated it!

They put it in there as something just for those of us who made it through the actual game. They WERE thinking about us. They just…have no idea what we actually like or want, apparently.

Except for that one guy who appreciated the idyllic respite. I guess they were mostly thinking about him.

Butch:

That’s what makes it so weird! In the rare instances that you feel that developers put more thought into an ending than just “Kill big bad, save world, etc.” it’s GOOD!

This is a whole new class of ending. Before this, we had:

1) put barely any thought into it, kill bad guy, move on. (See lots of games we love, such as Horizon, Dragon Age, the Witcher)

This is the first “Put thought into it and still have it come out like BOTH 1 and 2 above.”

I don’t think that’s the kind of innovative they were going for.

Feminina:

So creative and different! Very daring and unexpected! Like nothing we’ve experienced before!

And just not a good idea.

When we’re regretting the lack of villain monologues, you know something has gone wrong.

Butch:

Man, hasn’t it just?

****Fast forward to when we’re 80% done with DA4****

“Solas, dude, PLEASE shut up…..”(Pompous assed Solas voice) “But I read your blog from when you finished Red Dead 2 and you said you wanted more of this…”“I TAKE IT BACK!!!!!”

Feminina:

Oh, Solas. He WOULD monologue for three hours straight, no doubt. AND he would have read our blog, mostly so he could sneer at us, but also so he could use our previous statements against us.

Damn that arrogant bastard!

Butch:

Well, maybe, given his love of monologues, he could explain Dutch and Micah while he’s at it.

I’d tolerate him for that.

Feminina:

DUDE. Brilliant. I would love that. And if he wanted to clear up any confusing bits in other games while he’s at it, that would be awesome.

Oh man. That would be the best. There would be about 500 conversation options and you could ask him about every game ever and he’d tell you. “Were Scarlett and Roderick really insane? Should I have tried harder to make Danse love me in FO4? Exactly what DID Micah think he’d get by working with the Pinkertons?”

I would buy that game just FOR the villain monologue.

Butch:

Yeah, but admit it: You’d get the following options

? Red Dead 2? Fallout 4? Divinity? Like, all of Assassin’s Creed? Why couldn’t I bang Petra in Horizon?? The Pattern in Rapture? every answer to every game question ever(FLIRT)

and we both know what you’d pick.

And we’d still never know the answers.

Feminina:

Ah, but that wouldn’t even be an option unless I played an elven woman, so assuming I picked the scariest-looking Qunari I could possibly create, we’d be fine.

ALL THE ANSWERS, right here!

Butch:

Wouldn’t stop you. Admit it: You’ve kept at it with NPCs who were so not into you, just in case they changed their minds.

I’ve never done that, of course.

Feminina:

Nah, man, I want everyone to LLLOOOOOOOOVE MEEEEEEEE, not skulk away around corners when they see me coming because oh gawd it’s THIS bundle of need and frantic leering and inappropriate exploitation of power dynamics.

Also, I mean, generally once someone says they’re not into you, the flirtatious conversation options just go away, don’t they? Which is a helpful mechanic.

Like, speaking of DAI, remember when you flirted with Vivienne (of course you did!) and she was all “haha, you’re adorably amusing, but I have a lover”? That was the end of that. Partly because there was literally no further heart conversation option to pursue with her, if I remember correctly, but also, I dunno, she said she wasn’t interested. Her soul-crushing loss, man. If she changes her mind, she knows where to find me.

In Blackwall’s soggy, angst-riddled embrace. Seriously, Vivienne, come find me anytime. I mean, her lover was also dying, right? That was a plot point that we learned later?

Once he’s dead, whenever you’re ready to love again, I’ll be over here picking through the moldy flag collection. Siiiigh.

Dude, I make the most tragic romantic choices in games. Blackwall, Benny, the dying Thane, the Threesome of Shame…

Butch:

You do, but maybe you’ve changed. It’s been so long since we were able to make such choices. Sure, we got to dance with Mary Beth, maybe try to make a move on Mary, get confused because Mary and Mary Beth are pretty close name wise and kinda look alike, but it’s not the same.

Feminina:

Oh man, I’m so glad that wasn’t just me.

Mary? Oh, I mean Mary Beth, sorry!

I wonder if maybe that was intentional, if we were supposed to feel that Arthur also was–not confused, exactly, because clearly he can tell the difference between a woman he was engaged to and one he just works with, but if maybe he had a bit of additional fond feeling towards Mary Beth because she REMINDED him of Mary. And if that came through in the player as being slightly confused.

It’s possible I’ve changed. Only time and another game with romance options will tell. I wonder if AC Odyssey has romance?

Butch:

I have on good authority that it does.

And by “good authority” I mean “The internet.”

Feminina:

The internet is never wrong!

I can’t wait to play this and make some terrible choices in love. It’s gonna be great.

Butch:

You will likely end up alone, on one of those Greek boats with lots of oars, holding the helmet and chest plate of your lover who has gone off elsewhere to brood.

Or something. Given this is AC, who knows? Maybe he was an alien. Or a French Canadian.

Ya never know.

Feminina:

You do not! That’s the glory of this series!

Or it was, before they toned the historical alien interference way down. I personally miss it, although it’s possible I am literally the only person who does.

Butch:

I’ve only played the one, and there were long emails where I asked you what, exactly, the fuck was happening and you’d write these long posts in reply that made no sense. I anticipate more of the same.

With romance!

But first, we play the freebie.

Feminina:

And that one didn’t even mention the aliens much, if at all. Imagine how gloriously confusing it was back in the heyday of the mystery.

Although there was very little romance.

Remind me what the freebie is?

Butch:

What would you do without me?

What Remains of Edith Finch. You said you already downloaded it.

There are only two freebies a month. We’re playing the one that isn’t little cartoony chefs trying not to burn the kitchen down. Hopefully that’s not the one you got.

Feminina:

Aww…no cartoony chefs? But that one seems so full of potential romance, drama and themes!

Butch:

I got it for the boys. I’ll let you know. I’m sure meatball will tell me if there’s bloggage.

True, true, I got nothing, but that’s what happens after a neighborhood gathering when you have three nutsy kids and a neighbor who brews beer.

As an aside, most home brewed beer sucks. When a dude with a PhD in chemistry is making it, it does NOT suck. Dude should sell it. I wonder how good he is at crafting pear brandy….

Feminina:

Only one way to find out! Set that dude to work on the pear brandy, stat!

I had an uneventful evening, so I could finish PLAYING AS CHLOE.

I forgot what it’s like to play a shortish game that actually ends. I was kind of startled when the finale crept up on me. Though not in a bad way.

Good stuff. I enjoyed it a lot. You’re gonna love it.

No booze, though.

Butch:

We just have to make sure he doesn’t undermine us. He’s wily.

Oh man, I was afraid you’d finish. Sigh. Well, maybe I’ll whip through Horizon faster than you and catch up.

HAHAHAHAHA! Oh, where do I GET this stuff?

Games end? And then stay over? Surely you jest.

Man, I gotta start playing soon. All we’re doing this week is explaining how games can help us cope with our most insane impulses. Yesterday, we talked on murderous, psychopathic rage, today we’re back on irrational business plans.

Tomorrow it’ll be having kids!

Feminina:

You’re right!

Although I suppose this is a worthy area of research in a general sense: what do games, as a whole, do for us?

Whereas usually we’re all into the fine details of what a specific game, in particular, does for us at the time that we played it, when maybe we were annoyed because it got all talky on us at a point where we were really in the mood to just murder some dudes, or whatever.

Still, I think our strength lies in those fine details.

We could get a lot out of how games help us cope with children, though.

Butch:

I’m sure this has been done. You’re the medical librarian. Look it up! Or make a minion look it up.

We could get a lot of discussion out of it….but do we want to? Kids and games, man. Kids and games.

Anyway, games don’t help you cope with children. Children prevent you from playing games.

Feminina:

Games vs. children: the eternal struggle.

Butch:

T SHIRT!!!!!

[later]

Well, I continued to putz around with The Last Guardian which would be SOOO good if the controls weren’t absolutely terrible. It’s gorgeous, the feathery dog thing is awesome, the story and world are cool, and the puzzles are good! If only it let you solve the puzzles when you got the solution in your head, and not after 20 frustrating minutes of missed jumps and falling off the dog thing.

Soon. I shall start Horizon soon.

In the meanwhile, a throwback to a bioware game that was closer to bioware games of old:

Good read, but I also noticed the first comment: Did you play the Trespasser DLC, and she says “Don’t get me started on what happened in that.”

What was that? What did we miss??????

I miss Dragon Age.

Feminina:

I miss Dragon Age too. But I didn’t play that DLC, and don’t know anything about it. We missed something! But who knows what.

Frustrating controls are such a downer in a good game. “I want to love this, but…arrrrrghh!!!!”

Butch:

It’s a shame, really. I’m at a point where I need to just jump and shimmy some, a la UC, and it’s SO finicky. Damn. Remember when good games were good and bad games were bad?

‘We missed something but who knows what?’ is a pretty good

T SHIRT!!!!

Man, this day. This week, for that matter. One day, your kids will be older, and moodier, and they will get mad at shit that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with you, but they will take it out on you cuz kids. This will frustrate you as well. This will frustrate you all the more when it is because of something, say, your spouse did, like go to work too early, or your father might do, like miss a neighborhood gathering. This will make you want to throw things.

And it will suck even more if you don’t have a few thousand Kevins to shoot.

Man….shit.

Feminina:

Can’t wait, man.

Houses that will inevitably start falling apart 20 minutes after we move in…moody children with inappropriately directed anger…no Kevins…

No real spoilers: some unexpected discussion of Dragon Age games we have known

Butch:

The staycation continues, I haven’t played.

But, in going through the mental rolodex of topics….

So you know how we’re always “The best part of bioware games is meeting people and the characters and flirting and stuff?” Well….I think there might be too much of a good thing here.

The last time I shot anything was long, long ago. And not just cuz I haven’t played in a few days. Since running like hell from the remnant core thingy, I have a) set up an outpost on Eos and talked to dudes. b) went back to the tempest and talked to dudes. c) went to the nexus and talked to dudes, did little quests, talked to more dudes, listened to dudes, talked to dudes, d) got back on the tempest and talked to dudes, e) flew the tempest to a planet and wound up talking to a kett dude, then to Jaal’s dudes, and now I’m f) back on the tempest talking to dudes.

And…ok…I like these characters, I like the story, stuff’s happening, it’s not all fetch quests, it’s narrative, it’s moving, great.

But for the first time in a bioware game, and I have played A LOT of bioware games, I kinda find myself saying “Yeah, yeah, can I get back to the action sequences now?”

And it’s weird cuz it’s not because there’s anything fundamentally wrong with the talking to dudes bit. It’s good, solid, bioware dude talking. We’ve been itching for good, solid, bioware dude talking for a while, even during Horizon. But yet, I find myself wanting a playing session with less talking and more shooting. IN A BIOWARE GAME!

Maybe it’s just cuz I’ve spent a whole week with the kids and they’re nuts. But I dunno.

Feminina:

Well, I think in the end the best part is really a good balance. We love talking and flirting, but we also love looting and setting things on fire. Too much of either one risks monotony.

This game does tend to clump them up.

You go to a place, you walk around and talk to people for potentially 100 hours. You go to a planet, you drive around and shoot things for potentially 100 hours. It’s easy to get stuck in one or the other mode for extended periods of time. I have gone many play sessions without getting around to returning to somewhere I could talk to people. Then I have gone many play sessions without getting around to getting outside where I could get into fights.

I feel like that happened all the time in Dragon Age: Inquisition as well…you wouldn’t get back to Skyhold for weeks, and then you’d spend days there talking to people. Just the BioWare way?

Butch:

I’m starting to feel that I’m never going to fight again. And I figure that once I land somewhere, I better leave Suvi a picture so she doesn’t forget what I look like.

Maybe it’s the bioware bigassed open world way. Back in ye olden ME, the games were short, and the bits where you weren’t on the Normandy were contained. There wasn’t a risk of magpie. You went, you did, you came back. And there wasn’t that much of any of it! Each ME, for me, was about 40 hours. We’re going to be WAAAAY over that in this one (if we aren’t already). Sure, DAO was long, but it, too, was pretty contained when you weren’t camping. You went to the mage tower, or you went to the forest, or you spent WAY TOO FUCKING LONG in the deep roads (not bitter ok bitter), then you came back.

Bioware knows full well that their big thing is the place where you talk/flirt. Campfire, Normandy, Skyhold, Hawke estate, whatever. So that’s not going anywhere. But with the shift to a) open world games and b) bigger games in general that means when you’re NOT there you magpie and when you ARE there there has to be MORE to say because games always do MORE in games, not less.

Games like Horizon and TW3 didn’t have these issues because you didn’t have a ship/campfire/home to spend time in, or a bunch of people to talk to. Sure, there were NPCs, but there was never a need to have repeated “Let’s get them all together and see what’s up” sessions. And it worked. But bioware’s SIGNATURE is those sessions. Would we play a bioware game that didn’t have a camp/ship/castle? Would we like it as much?

Feminina:

Well, also remember in DAO, at least, you could have conversations with people at places that WEREN’T camp. You could click on companions at any time and sometimes they’d have new things to say (which did mean the responsibility of checking regularly), and sometimes people would just start talking to you while you were out on the road or whatever. You didn’t actually have to go back to camp to talk, although that was obviously the easiest place to check in on everyone at once.

I remember intense conversations at odd times, like “oh, we just finished a battle, let’s stand here and chat among the quickly dissolving corpses,” which is maybe why they moved away from that and into a ‘keep the conversations in a conversation area’ model. I remember kind of missing the at-will conversation options in DA2 or…what was that one, DA Awakening.

I miss having a friendly gabfest over a hot cup of poultice and the blazing ruins of a darkspawn encampment!

Anyway, I’m not sure what the point to that digression was, just fondly remembering the olden days.

I guess one point could be, they HAVE tinkered with their standard model over time, but it does seem that recently, and especially as you say in the bigassed open worlds, they’ve really settled on ‘keep the conversation in the Conversation Zones.’

Which has the advantage of being predictable for players, since we know that when we go to a Conversation Zone we’re going to have the option to talk to people (and we can avoid that for weeks on end if we’re not in the mood), but it does lose a little of the seeming spontaneity of finding that someone has something new to say about something while you’re just wandering through the countryside.

You’re also absolutely right about the timing and the (once highly limited) risk of magpie. I mean, you can roam over every inch of the Citadel if you want (and you do), but it’s a contained space. You have to stop sometime.

Butch:

True, and that was nice, chatting with people on the road. We should do more things like that.

The best was when someone would decide to have some moody conversation with you about their religious faith, or former loves, or the beauty of the land of their childhood, when they were covered in blood.

“Yes, I am covered in the guts of darkspawn, and we’ve been underground in a festering hole with scary assed voice overs for days, but all of that reminds me of the scent of lavender drifting over the verdant hill of Orlais….”

Those were good days. Had some hot companions.

And yet, even though they ditched that, they have kept the idea of the NPCs talking to each other. Liam and Vetra don’t shut up. Though I seem to think this happens more in the NOMAD, but I could be wrong. I guess when the pathfinder gets to pick the radio station, there’s nothing to do but chat.

And the Citadel was, relatively, small. Omega even more so.

Though I could have listened to that big elephant dude read Shakespeare all day.

Ha! Yes, the deep, soulful conversations where you were both covered in blood! How well I remember.

“Should we maybe continue this after we wash up…?”

“No, no, I really want to share the way this distant memory from my childhood has gradually come clear during our travels.”

The companions DO chat constantly in the Nomad. Probably trying to keep their minds off my driving. To aid my concentration, SAM helpfully edits out all the stifled shrieks and cries of “that’s a vertical cliff!” and “I’m going to be sick.”

Butch:

I’m surprised they talk at all. It should be:

“Hey wanna chat?”

“Nah. She’s about to get stuck. Then she’ll reload and we’ll have to say it all again “.

Feminina:

“Better wait until we’re out of this canyon and then say everything we have at super speed to make sure it all gets covered, then autosave.”

Butch:

That’s how I’d play it.

Play first. Talk later. Then for fucks sake auto save.

Feminina:

That there’s a T shirt for sure.

Butch:

We’ve been slow on those of late.

I blame pneumonia. And kids.

Feminina:

Pneumonia even more than kids. You’ve had the kids a long time and it hasn’t slowed you down much. The pneumonia is new, and therefore to be blamed for everything.

Vague location spoilers for Rise of the Tomb Raider; some spoilers for romantic options and character stories in Dragon Age: Inquisition

Butch:

OK, I’m here. Have the Xmas busy.

Played a bit. Mostly, this was dude killing, but good, exciting dude killing. It was the “Sneak through the village” (Which, as we know, is sneak, kill two dudes, feel good about yourself, get seen, go shotgun) bit, and now I’m at the “Get into the place” bit. Which place? That place with the….well…it’s hard to be specific in this game.

Two thoughts (neither involving Johnson Physics, as it’s only Wednesday):

The difficulty balance is really, really spot on. Played a good hour, it was sneaky killy the whole way, and I died once. Just once! And yet, the whole time, it was TENSE. A whole lot of “OMIGOD I’m down to the last leaf! Oh my god he almost got me!” Rare to have that much tense without so many load screens. I wonder why we’re getting that a notch up from default. Are we just that good?

Also, we touched on this before but I was reminded last night: I think they really did make a concerted effort to make Lara’s deaths less ooky and her kills more ooky. I think they did intend a metaphor there. I did my first “water stealth” kill last night and….eww. I was reminiscent of the vaguely sexualized violence of the first one, but backwards. She’s there, lying on top of the guy, strangling away, but it’s him that ends up dead and floating away. Indeed, it was SO reminiscent of the ooky deaths in game one that, at first, I thought I had fucked up somehow and I had died. “Why did that kill me oh it didn’t. Oh. OH!”

I don’t think it’s a mistake.

Which begs an interesting question: Game one was criticized, rightly or wrongly, for those vaguely sexualized death scenes. We have a problem switching the sides?

I also thought the “sneak through the village (until you get spotted and have to go on a rampage)” bit was effective. I died a lot more than you, though (should have had the shotgun! I had some assault rifle or other), so this “are we that good?” question should probably just turn into you being that good.

I suggest you take it and revel in it. You’re really just that good, man. Enjoy it.

I remember that stealth water kill! Nasty indeed. Just…like…I mean, she really killed the hell out of that guy. I don’t know if it’s entirely equivalent to the slightly sexualized deaths of Lara herself in the first game, though, partly because this guy had a lot of bulky clothing concealing his sexy, sexy body, and partly because this guy was a guy.

We can argue about whether or not that’s fair, but I think it’s true that certain things suggest ‘sexy’ for a female character and don’t necessarily suggest it, or don’t suggest it nearly as strongly, for a male one.

Say, sprawling limply with limbs akimbo as you float downstream.

I would argue that on a woman’s body that sort of posture reads a lot like the displays of surrender and passion and “hey I’m just hanging out splayed on this bed here ’cause why not?” that we see all the time in every form of media providing wholesome entertainment and selling everything anybody could possibly want to buy.

On a man’s body it reads at least as much like “that dude is dead” or possibly passed out drunk or badly injured or something. I mean, maybe he’s surrendering to passion, sure, it could be, but that’s not the first way I’d read it, because we just don’t nearly as often (not never!–there are certainly counterexamples) see images everywhere of guys just hanging out splayed on this bed here ’cause why not.

So I guess I think that bit was as grisly as the first game’s Lara-deaths, but less disturbingly titillating, and maybe that’s why we react differently?

Butch:

Two words, dude: Grenade. Arrows. Grenade arrows are my favorite thing in the history of games. I haven’t been this into a thing since Morrigan and I did that whole “Inferno plus that electrical storm spell from the other side of the door” trick. And you can craft more mid fight! R1! Grenade arrows make dudes go away, man.

I am not that good. But my grenade arrows are.

As for the other conversation…He was very clothed, that he was. But the “guy was a guy” bit….Hmm. I mean, she was prone on top of him in a rather…suggestive position. It may not be entirely equivalent, as I don’t think this was SUPPOSED to be….I hate to say “sexy,” cuz, eww…but you get my meaning….but MAN it felt similar. Like I said, I thought I had died.

But, I see where you’re coming from. Different media portrayals. Makes sense.

Also thrown in there was the fact there was a scene of attempted rape in game one independent of death scenes, so they went there explicitly.

Maybe this whole kill just goes back to the whole “Lara as animal predator” thing that I mentioned when she started climbing trees. More a savagery than a sexual thing. She’s losing her very humanity bit by bit.

Also a theme, that. Telling that the hardest enemies (at least for me), Lara’s equals or betters, aren’t men, they’re bears and jaguars. She’s on par with the beasts, better than the men. Also not an accident, I think.

Feminina:

Ah, that’s a good point. She was crouching over him in a pose that I saw as more like you say, feral and animalistic, but which could also (and almost certainly WOULD also, if the genders were reversed) be read as sort of rapey. Double standards, man!

So she’s becoming more like a predatory animal (nice point that the hard fights tend to be with animals)…but also more like a man? Is there a weird gender commentary hidden in there too? The standard “men are beasts” stuff? Hm.

Butch:

Better than the men. I die on the bears all the time.

It’s funny that the nastiest baddie is the jaguar, which is what she looks the most like when she’s up in the trees and sneaking.

Feminina:

I guess it’s fitting, really, that the thing she has to work hardest to defeat is the creature most like herself.

I haven’t defeated it yet, actually. I’m not really in this for the hunting, so I just ran away from it…then sneaked over to grab the coin cache and hightailed it out of jaguar territory. I’ve got nothing against a jaguar, man.

Butch:

I did kill one! It was between me a and a tomb. It was HARD man! I wasn’t hunting it. I just wanted the tomb. Animals have to stop hanging out by tombs.

And we don’t want to kill them! We see Lara in them, man.

In other news, my hockey buddy, who has absolutely NO tech no how, and hasn’t played a game like, ever, got a PS4 Pro because his kids wanted one. He decided he and his wife are gonna play some stuff to bond and, of course, was asking me questions. I told him to grab minecraft (which the kids demanded) and the Unfinished Swan to start for them, and gave him UC 1-3 and DAI for the grown ups. Are those good starters? TW3 and FO4 seem more advanced…

I dunno, man. I haven’t had to worry about gateways for some time….

He’ll be addicted in no time. And he’ll be pissed his wife banged Cullen.

Anyway, nice work probably hooking new converts! I think DAI and UC are good intro games. Something on the fantasy side, something on the ‘real world’ action side…decent story/action balance in both cases (don’t want them getting hooked on sports titles or something). Good work.

Butch:

Sports titles are good for learning buttons, though. I’ll give them that.

Minor spoilers for Life is Strange, episode 2: lengthy digression into communication mechanics in RPGs

Butch:

Started episode 2, took a shower, erased the stuff on the mirror, talked to Kate, told her not to go to the police, stopped.

Kate gives me pause. I have this feeling there is something up with Kate. But I can’t tell. Usually, in something that’s telling a good story, when you have a parade of rather stereotypical characters (and boy do we here: rich bitch, ex soldier security nut, crazy jock, Christian weirdo, nerdy friendzoned nice guy, etc.) something happens that turns all those on their heads, or at least complicates them. And, as this story is pretty compelling so far, part of me is looking at all these stereotypes sideways.

Buuuuuuuut…….

Then I realize this game ALSO has the subtlety of naming the main character Caulfield and I think “Maybe this game just ain’t subtle and there’s nothing more there but stereotypes.”

In terms of mechanics…..

So here we are at a difference! I started episode 2 a day after episode 1 and you didn’t. My impressions of starting right away: I liked it. It was like watching a show on netflix, something I’ve gotten rather used to. Even the fact that there was the Square Enix/Dontnod logo, and title credits and all wasn’t that jarring. I mean, tv shows do that, so why not games? I certainly didn’t feel like “Man, I was SUPPOSED to take two months off, and this is weird.” What was it like to wait?

Feminina:

In many ways it’s really not that subtle. I would say, don’t work too hard looking at all these characters sideways.

I like to think that the game is using these high school archetypes intentionally, maybe trying to use the familiarity of the characters as another of those references that makes us feel as if we’re watching an old TV show, and making that the backdrop for the weirdness of Max’s power–trying to contrast the standard high school tropes with this new element? Like, “here is the iconic high school setting as you’ve always seen it: and here’s this very weird thing that happens against that stock-footage background.”

Maybe they’re also aiming to have you NOT have to think too hard about the various characters because they want you to feel (fairly accurately) that you already know them, and therefore you can focus on just being Max and thinking about her situation. Since the game was released in chunks that players had to wait for, they may have decided to go with fairly stock characters because they figured it would be easier for people to keep track of these characters over the course of several months where you only saw them intermittently, and that not having to try to track a whole bunch of minor character arcs where people we thought were one-dimensional turned out to be two-dimensional would make it easier to follow the main story.

Also, they’re French, so I feel maybe there’s an element of them intentionally recreating a lot of specifically American tropes (are these character types universal, or regional?); I read somewhere they were talking about how hard they worked to create this very specific U.S. Northwest environment, and since that was so conscious, it seems likely they put similar thought into the supporting characters as part of that environment. (Alternatively, maybe they just thought that’s actually how all U.S. high schools are? These characters might not have seemed as stereotypical to them because maybe in France there are slightly different stock character types?)

Or else maybe they put so much thought into the physical environment that they got tired and just tossed in a bunch of stereotypes for human characters. I may be working too hard to make excuses for what is actually lazy character development.

As for what it was like to wait…I think having that wait to look forward to after finishing each episode made me kind of sit and think about an episode for a bit longer and maybe a bit more deeply than I would have if I’d known I was starting the next one the next day. (Although since I we weren’t talking about it at the time, all those deep thoughts are now lost to history.) I mean, there’s more room to wonder what’s going to happen if you can’t find out for six weeks or whatever it was. Also, the end of each episode I think maybe felt more like an END. Even though I knew it wasn’t the end of the story, there’s this feeling of finality when you know that that’s all you’re going to get for a while.

I was frequently curious about what it would be like to play them all back to back, so that’s another difference.

Butch:

Ah, damn. Not subtle. That’s too bad. This game has a good enough hook and a good enough narrative (at least a good over arching narrative) that it deserves better than superficial characters. Oh, well. I’ll never get how some stories get things so right EXCEPT the characters! Usually, games are the other way. Cool people doing….stuff…..

Hmm. Perhaps it is simpler that way. Hell, even playing it in order like this I have gone back to the journal to tell who is who. Brooke? Juiliet? Dana? Which was which? I couldn’t tell people like that apart when I was IN high school, I’m even worse at it now.

But still. A flaw’s a flaw. Just because that flaw had to be there to make something easy on the player, it’s still a flaw.

And yeah, that French thing made me wonder. Not because “Pfft. French” but it seems an interesting choice to do something so out of where you’re from. Wasn’t their first game in Paris? That makes sense. Usually places stick “close to home,” even in fantasy worlds. CDPR talks at great length about how they incorporated Polish and Eastern European myths into the Witcher.

It’s funny because usually it’s Americans who are always so guilty at going for “authentic” and missing. I’m sure it’s not easy to get a plate of General Gau’s chicken in China, but here it’s “Pfft, it’s got soy sauce. Close enough.” Maybe Dontnod was all “Pfft! Hats. Jeans. Posters. Check.”

Sense of finality after an episode? Really? Cuz I would think the opposite would be true. Because you didn’t just sit wondering. You played other stuff. I would have done the same. Generally, when I do that, thoughts about what I played evaporate and I think on what I am actually playing (this is why the blog’s time delay is so wonderful). If I played something else for a month, then came back to this, I’d be even more confused about who was who, who did what, etc. Because it’s different from, say, playing Mass Effect 2 then waiting three years and playing Mass Effect 3. When you’ve spent 40 hours in a game world, getting to know everyone, you can keep those impressions. Three hours? I mean, I like Chloe, sure, but do I know her as well as I knew Mordin? Not yet. Not even close.

Feminina:

Ah, but there you go…you couldn’t tell people like this apart in high school. Now you’re Max, who is in high school. Max can’t tell them apart either, and indeed, why would she be any better at it than you were as a kid?

Maybe it reflects Max’s rather superficial view of these other people. I mean, she seems like a good kid and she’s our hero and I like her, but she’s a kid, and maybe it’s part of her character as a kid that she pigeonholes people and reduces them to stock characters in her life. (Though, hell, grown-ups pigeonhole people all the time too–it just makes life easier.)

I also didn’t mean to say that every single character you meet stays one-dimensional for the entire game. That’s actually not true at all. There are several people you get to know more about and who become considerably more complicated–just, don’t expect it from every person you meet. That’s what I meant by don’t work too hard looking sideways at everybody, because if you keep waiting for some specific character to develop hidden depths, you might be disappointed.

But I think maybe all my friendly excuses made it sound as if the game is worse in that area than it actually is (after all, why make excuses if there’s nothing to excuse!), where in fact there are cases where I thought they did quite a good job adding layers to an initially one-dimensional character.

It’s a good game! There are some good characters! Don’t get all pre-disappointed now!

Butch:

This is so. I realistically cannot tell these people apart. One of those realism/gameism lines that games do tread. Here I go again, with this “I forgot it’s a game cuz I ain’t killing shit” things.

Yeah, Chloe is already rather interesting. And I can’t really hold it against the game. I mean, we’ve talked lots on the interchangability of bad guys. If there can be hundreds of “gun dudes” as opposed to “dynamite dudes” in games, then we can forgive not developing every single character.

Sh, I’m not pre-disappointed. I am enjoying it. I’m also rather glad I played another 90s mellow game that was set in Oregon (seriously….what’s with that?) right before. It makes for interesting comparisons.

Feminina:

Well, if we define “game” as “thing that is fun,” then yeah, if we’re not murdering hundreds of dudes, there’s no fun and thus no game. I demand slaughter!

It’s just how it is.

This IS interesting to compare to Gone Home, with the low-key, Oregon setting. I didn’t play them back to back, of course, so I didn’t make those comparisons myself at the time.

This one is 2013, though, isn’t it? They have cell phones and everything, which most of us didn’t in 1995. (We had, like, actual landline telephones in our dorm rooms, remember? Weird. I bet there’s not a landline phone to be found in the dorms these days. Well, maybe one for emergencies, in the lobby or something. If I ever go back to our alma mater, this is the first thing I’m checking.)

Butch:

You’ll never go back.

You reminded me, been meaning to mention, the text message as plot device is pretty ingenious. I’m loving that.

Feminina:

Maybe for my 20-year reunion! …naw.

Easier to just call the admissions office or something. Pretend to be an anxious prospective parent wanting to know if Jr. will be able to call home in the event of a lightning storm that knocks out the cell towers.

I love the text messaging too! Nice use of the technology to drive the plot and fill us in on some of her relationships with people without having to walk us through different conversations.

Games need more fancy dress balls, heists, group hugs, and texting.

And male nudity.

I will pre-order 30 copies of a game with the synopsis “naked men text as they get dressed for a ball and carry out a heist: close with a group hug.”

Butch:

It certainly beats the age old mechanic of “Talk to everyone, everywhere, all the time to see if they have anything new to say.”

***Glares at Mass Effect****

***And Dragon Age***

Feminina:

Seriously! We could do with some cell phones in ME. Garrus could text us “hey, need to talk to you about the ship’s armor” or whatever.

Dragon Age, I don’t know, maybe they could just leave you notes or something. Ooh, like sometimes in Skyrim (I’m going to praise Skyrim!) a messenger would run up and hand you a message related to some quest and then run off. And then you knew you needed to go talk to so-and-so!

Butch:

All for that. At least in DAO they were all together, there. But running around the normandy? Or skyhold? Only to find no one had anything to say except the last thing they said?

Text, dudes. Text.

Feminina:

It was a lot of running around talking to people. And granted, that made us actually LOOK at your cool ship/castle, which they probably spent thousands of hours carefully coding for us, and it does perhaps more realistically replicate the reality of a developing relationship (you have to seek them out sometimes to spend time with them, they aren’t always going to be the ones reaching out to you–unless they need you to do something like go find some moldy flag pieces).

So I can kind of argue for it in a way. But it did get a little old after a while.

Butch:

It got really old! And shit, we’re the CAPTAIN! The INQUISITOR! They want us to do something and/or fuck us they should come running to US! It’s just unseemly to have to go to the tavern or the engine room to say “Uh, hey? Need anything? Wanna make out?”

Some spoilers for mid-game settings in Uncharted 2, and the location of the Strange Relic. Also a random spoiler for character development in Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Butch:

I found the strange relic! It’s….. Kinda strange.

But besides the STRANGE RELIC I got not a whole lot. Shot some dudes in Nepal, Chloe showed up with a rocket launcher, got the “Is that a ceremonial dagger in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” line (No WONDER they praise the writing of this game), called it a day.

I will say this: DAMN this Nepal thing is cool. I mean, I love a good jaunt through ancient shit and mountains and cliffs as much as the next guy, but this urban scene is a) really cool, b) really well done and c) SUCH a change. I can’t remember the last time I played a game in an environment like this, and it’s pretty damn awesome. Especially the way it starts: running from a jeep down an alley. Like “Dude, you are NOT in Borneo anymore.”

Great stuff.

I guess cities are just harder. I mean, the details I have in mine, anyway, are nuts. Trees must be easier.

Also, was nice when Chloe went ahead there, after the temple bit, and I really thought “She’s so gonna betray me, yup, she did, oh, wait….no she didn’t! But will she?” That was cool. And well done. And totally foreseeable cuz after three damn DA games I still feel that way about Morrigan.

Feminina:

You found the Strange Relic?! Damn it. I never saw it. I don’t know if my eyes/attention span is failing, or if the treasures are just damn hard to see on the PS3. Well, I’m not going back for it now.

I didn’t play last night because I was overcome by the need to sort tiny baby clothes (they are so tiny!).

But I asked the midwife and she said we could bring the console and hook it up, so if I wind up getting induced (which apparently always takes longer) I am TOTALLY doing that.

Butch:

It was so odd. It was in the first Nepal Street, chapter called Urban Warfare. Right after you learn the “flip over a sign while hanging” trick, there’s like a crossroads. One way has an alley with an open sewer grate, and nothing else, so of COURSE I go in, because, in video games, you ALWAYS go in an open sewer grate, and I find myself in this little room, with nowhere to go, just flowing sewer water, and a treasure just sitting on a pile of rocks in the middle. “Oh! A treasure!” says I, “How lucky I came down here to this place with nothing else in it,” and, what do you know? It’s the strange relic. Which is just an egg with a bunch of writing stuff on it, which someone probably took hours to decode, which I will not take hours to decode.

But find it I did. Boo-yah.

Oh dude. As someone who has gone through the having a kid when you already have one thing not once but twice, ain’t nothing reminds you how big the kid/s you have have gotten like looking at baby clothes. “He used to fit in THAT? No way.”

Just make sure you have the kid first. Don’t play while in labor. Otherwise you know it’ll be like Midwife: “Ms. Ettien! You have to push! NOW!” You: “Just….hang on….middle of a cutscene…..should be a save point…any minute…..”

Feminina:

Oh man, I missed the sewer grate. Siiigh.

I did find the Urban Warfare stuff an interesting change of pace from the bits out in the jungle. Picking through the remnants of peoples’ recent, modern lives (mercifully no mangled civilian bodies, we notice) was quite different from picking through the remnants of ancient temples. (On that note, the ‘blacklight’ mechanic where you followed the trails of blood through that underground temple? Interesting and effectively creepy, I thought.)

I felt quite bad for all the people who used to live in these apartments, whose books were strewn all over the floors, etc. It was kind of a good “violence has actual consequences” bit. Granted, it presented this with a very ‘T-rating’ light hand: your actions are still all about the violence, and there are no particular consequences for you, and you don’t actually see other humans experience these consequences, but just seeing a destroyed city where people obviously lived very recently was more emotionally engaging than just tramping through another ancient tunnel. I mean, I love me some ancient tunnels, don’t get me wrong, and the piles of skeletons do remind one that people died there, but…old. A long time ago. The immediacy of the city environment, where recognizable familiar artifacts are everywhere, makes you see your own actions in a different way.

Butch:

Yeah, but in your game, once you found the sewer grate, instead of the thing being right there, blinking like a mighty beacon, you’d have to kill 19 feral ghouls, climb seven ledges and solve a puzzle. So it’s ok.

The urban warfare bit was very cool, and still different from Fallout. I don’t know why, whether it was better graphics or the carnage was more recent or what, but I said yesterday that I hadn’t played a settling like this in a while, and I stand by that despite recently completing FO4. Not sure why.

And you raise an interesting tangent: I wonder why they decided to make this so T. TR didn’t go down that road, and it was more than just the gruesome death bits (remember when we thought poor Sam was about to get burned alive and Lara was all desperately saying “Just look at me…just look at me?” Harrowing.) This game COULD have been M. It’s close. Certainly, Naughty Dog is capable of making a very very good, very very M game (The Last Of Us), so I wonder why they pulled punches with this one.

I mean, it’s so very, very close. Shit, I think in terms of language/smoking/blood/visceral violence it’s more M than Skyrim, which WAS M (still not at all sure why), and it’s at LEAST on par with Mass Effect (which was M), which, sure, had a “sex” scene (with a BEBHBB) that was exactly as sexy as the scene between Nathan and Chloe in his room that we’ve already seen.

I don’t get it.

The blacklight bit was pretty awesome. And it played on the fact you likely played 1. I was, and I bet you were, waiting for a ghouly thing to pop out at any moment. They got in the supernatural creep, or at least the promise and expectation of supernatural creep, only to pull it away. Indeed, it’s Nathan that goes all “AAAAAA” while holding to skeleton to fake Chloe and Sully (and the player) out. Nice touch, being faked out by your own character.

Feminina:

I think in Fallout there was some of that “this happened a long time ago” aspect, that put distance between you and the horror of what you were tramping through. I mean, that horror was definitely there, and there were times when you’d stumble across skeletons with coffee cups in the cafe or whatever and it would hit you that this depicts the horrible death of average people on a massive scale, but for the most part everything was so run down and dingy that you could kind of place it more in the context of “ancient temples” than “now-devastated landscape I could have been going about my day-to-day business in a week ago.”

So true, I was constantly waiting for something to jump on me in that blacklight bit, and it was kind of a cool twist that nothing ever did. And that in fact the only thing that “jumped” was Drake being silly.

As to why it’s rated Teen…money? Just going for the widest possible audience? That focus is also in keeping with the comic book/adventure novel/adventure film theme they’ve got going on, so maybe they felt it just fit better this way with their overall plan for the mood of the series.

Butch:

Must be it. I mean, in my game, there was a bit where the water was still running. This overflowing toilet, just pouring water. It was an interesting counterpoint to the nice, pretty waterfalls in Borneo. It’s effective, I give it that.

Drake being silly is another instance of this game taking, not just adventure tropes, but game tropes and standing them on their heads. Which is good writing.

Also, the rating is the ESRB having its head up its ass. I mean, they’re the ones who rate, not the publishers. And this…. I mean, I’m so used to pretty much everything getting an M if it’s even remotely M that I figured this would be PG at best, so I let the kids watch some of it only to find myself saying “wait, what did he just say? And what’s that and DUDE ok, back to PBS.”

I’d rather have them watch Skyrim.

Feminina:

It’s true, the setting means that the language in Uncharted is very modern, including swearing that you wouldn’t necessarily hear in another setting. But swearing is more OK these days, as long as you’re not TOO creative/constant with it.

Fantasy tends to have made-up swear words or not use them much (what euphemism did DA come up with? I can’t remember), and Fallout…some swearing, but minimal foul language, really. It’s as if swearing is perceived as “real-world” and so the farther a setting is from the ‘real (modern) world’ the more there’s a perceived need to either make up setting-specific foul language, or else to just skip the whole question.

But the violence. This game is bloodier than ME. The ghouly things were just as bad as husks (I HATE husks), the “sex” is pretty even….. I don’t get it. If anything, the “sex” is more mature in this one. I mean, ME had that one rather demure scene. This? I mean, Drake and Chloe sure talk about it. “There’s a hotel.” “Chloe, this isn’t the time.” “It’s the tallest building in the city.” “Oh….” Every third piece of dialog from Sully is about hookers.

I don’t get it.

Feminina:

Oh, I might have been thinking of the Witcher…’ploughing,’ right. Maybe DA didn’t have one.

“It’s a shame to sit on something so pretty.”

I think really with Uncharted it’s more that yeah, they talk about a lot of ‘adult’ stuff, but it’s all vague rather than graphic. Yeah, there’s hookers…but ‘hooker’ itself isn’t a dirty word! Etc.

Plus, this is T for TEEN, you terrible parent. Your TEEN children will know what a hooker is. Clearly, you shouldn’t even be thinking about sharing this game with your pre-teen. I’m calling CPS now.

Butch:

He sure talks about hookers a lot.

And come on! Usually, something is as bad as ads for Marvel movies on during cooking shows and it gets an M. T usually means “Ok for five year olds,” E means “Sorta like Bubble Guppies.” (I just like saying Bubble Guppies. Try it. It’s fun.)

Sheesh. It’s not like my three year old wants me to put two foam swords in the back of his jammie onesie so he can be Geralt.

Often.

Feminina:

Yeah, Sully plays the “lovable scoundrel friend” thing pretty hard. Hookers, wild parties, gambling. The very model of a good time! Which kind of implies that Drake is perhaps not all that much different, although his responses to the hooker talk tend to be a little dismissive in a slightly “some of us don’t NEED to hire hookers” way. Like, it’s all good fun to hire hookers, but if you’re cool enough to be the hero, you’re cool enough to attract legions of women willing to party with you for free.

All very standard, really. For stuff NO CHILD SHOULD EVER WITNESS, YOU MONSTER.

Butch:

If you’re cool enough to get with Morrigan, you don’t need anything else.

I’m not a monster! I’m progressive.

You’re the one naming your newborn after wine.

Feminina:

Wine is classy. It’s only terrible if I name him after cheap beer, or a street drug.

1) BHBEBB. 2) Essentially Morrigan. And the last time we had that choice, choosing the “normal” one over the “slightly evil” one led to you being attached to the “Eight ways of fucking crazy” one by the time we got to the end of DA2.

So watch: Elena turns nuts. Just like Leliana. So there.

Feminina:

Ah. I like it. Strong predictions that can be definitively confirmed or disproved by later installments (and/or with fierce argument).

Now, I’m going to have to disagree with you, if only because we know Elena’s in 4 and we don’t know that Chloe ever shows up again after 2. I’m going to guess that after hours of will-she-or-won’t-she-betray him, Chloe will finally betray him, and Elena won’t.

Maybe there will be another woman entirely in 3! Who may or may not betray him.

Butch:

Pfft. Betrayal. I keep telling you, Morrigan may well be completely evil. I don’t care. Lust is blind.

OK…if lust wants to spend all its time pining over Chloe’s outfit after she betrays Drake, to the point that it sulkily refuses to accept some as-yet-unknown romance option in 3 AND spurns Elena when she comes back, I can’t argue. The…heart or whatever…wants what it wants.

First of all, I retract ‘dude’ and replace with Patricia, who does do a fine job and also isn’t the ‘random dudebro’ I thought the comment originally came from. Thanks for linking the article, I should have re-read it before attempting to address your topic. So the topic carries more weight than I originally attributed to it.

As you said originally, it would be hard (and probably unpleasant) to do 90 hours of non-filler. But having read the article again, I still kind of wonder what to consider filler. She mentions the conflict between mages and Templars reduced to a mission to kill x number of enemies. Is this filler, or is this bad mission design? The comments about collect 5 of this or kill 10 of that… is that filler or bad design? Is it maybe the same thing? Collect 5 of this can become a tool to teach a player about a crafting system near the beginning of a game; that’s good design. But if you’re doing it as a penultimate mission, then that’s bad design. Are both examples filler?

I don’t think anyone would argue that ‘collect the 100 full (not empty! I r corrected) bottles throughout the game could be classified as filler, but it’s been proven that some population of people enjoy doing that, it’s somewhat cheap to author, and if it’s contextually wrapped and the player is rewarded at the end (not only in achieveoos but potentially in-game as well) then what’s the harm with including that? As she states, the back of the box may say over 100 hours of gameplay, but I think that anyone who thinks that that means that all 100 hours are complex narratively-driven super-fun gameplay hours that every person who buys the game will experience and want to play every single drama-dripping second of… well, I think customers understand their own play styles fairly well and know that even if a box says 100 hours, it’ll only be 100 hours for the intrepid completionists. And that not all the gameplay will be exactly the type they desire the most.

Going back to the food analogy, perhaps what we’re looking at (in addition to plate size) is also a combination of the food pyramid, and then mixed into a person’s individual palate.

Food Pyramid: Thoughtful, narratively dense, provoking gameplay is most likely to be the smallest amount of gameplay, but closest to what most players want out of DAI. Companion side-quests the next largest, but still small, portion. Not as satisfying, but still engaging. Then random side quests, then kill-a-population quests, then collection quests. Each has the potential to be larger in terms of number, but also increasing in shallowness. At what point does it become filler? I think that answer varies per person, although probably all agree about the largest/shallowest; no one would buy the game just to collect the bottles. One person’s palette may think the rifts are filler, another person may consider them integral to their experience. Are the rifts filler? Well, they skill-test the player (which is an important part of games), they provide experience and loot, and they can be fun. What if the basic definition of rifts comes down on the non-filler side, but the actual number the put into the game eventually moves it into the filler portion (ie… ugh, more rifts to close – I’m tired of them). Again, I think this is going to vary per person, but I also think one could ask is that bad design or filler or are they the same?

Regardless of what they’re called, I really do wonder where the median sits. Probably not where I do. I did, (opening Origin to check) 123 hours and I would say some of those certainly were filler (waiting for the war table so I completed some collection quests I wouldn’t ordinarily would have) so let’s chop it down to 90 or 100. Of those, I did the stuff Patricia did so I guess that means I played some filler as well? And the ‘mundane’ missions between the ‘heady’ missions; well, she implies that they simply ‘gave her something to do’ in between hard decisions (paraphrasing) and as she indicates, this is useful down time. Perhaps the issue is more in the quality of the down-time, rather that having down-time or not. What if the optional dungeon did shed light or perspective on some of the more heady events that just happened, or will happen. Would it then cease to be filler?

Bah; I’m meandering around the topic. So what is it we’re talking about? DAI has a filler problem. Does it? What would it be if we took out the stuff she called filler? Well, it would be shorter. Would it affect its quality? Maybe critics would have scored it higher for being more focused, but scored down for being an open world with nothing to do in it? What about sales? I can’t even begin to contemplate that. What if the ‘filler’ was more meaningful and better connected to the ‘heady’ stuff? That might help, but I’m sure some people would still consider it filler. So the answer seems to be ‘provide only the heady stuff, in an open world, for 100 hours’. That doesn’t seem like the best answer.

Did DAI have a filler problem for Patricia? Yes. Did it for me? No. Did it have filler (or bad design)? Yes. Did it have too much? For some the answer is yes, and others no. So… to help guide a developer, where’s the median? What would be the best line to draw creatively and commercially? And how long will that line be valid?

Butch:

I’m going to leave this particular bit be, as it’s really good (it’s like Buttons is a developer or something). I’ll add a couple of things here.

1) I think a lot of this comes from the “Skyrim effect,” that is, players want big. Remember older bioware games? Like Mass Effect? That people liked? 40 hours or so. The Witcher 2, which is getting a lot of fond rememberances these days? 40 hours or so. Then Skyrim, and now if it isn’t 100 hours something’s wrong with it, even though nothing at all was wrong with the tighter, not openworldy RPGs of yore. Skyrim. Bah. So stuff gets added. And added.

2) Buttons, you’re going to play Witcher 3, yes? I’m very curious to see how that game does it’s own reactions to Skyrim (both DAI and TW3 are the first big RPGs after Skyrim). They’ll be similar and different to DAI. I think we’re going to get far closer to that 100 hours of dense. Is heady stuff, open world, 100 hours the best answer? Well, we may see something closer to that on Tuesday. CDPR is known for (sometimes overly) dense plotting. Will we like it? Is it possible? We’ll see when the credits roll.

Feminina:

Speaking only for myself, it’s definitely true that when I read “100 hours of gameplay” I take it to mean “assuming you do absolutely everything, including stuff you will never actually get around to,” and mentally append the YMMV tag. I don’t think that really needs to be explicitly spelled out, although perhaps–thinking once more of the food analogy–we could imagine “nutrition information” statements for games indicating that they contain, say, 5 hours of main plot, 8 hours of companion/sideplot, 6 hours of fighting and 81 hours of bottle-hunting, or whatever. Then each person could know where their own line is for filler and get a sense for how much to expect. I could see that being interesting information to have, and potentially influencing buying decisions, but it is the kind of information you can generally get from reviews (although often with less precise numbers and more subjective “it had a lot of filler” notes, where what counts as “filler” can vary from person to person), so I’m not sure there’s really much need for it.

That feels like a project for a dedicated web site or something (basically How Long to Beat, but with more category breakdowns?), rather than something that would ever show up as a standard feature of game packaging. Assuming it isn’t required by law, like actual food nutrition labels, that is. And then it would only be focused on the “3 hours of blood-spilling, 10 minutes of nudity” stuff, you know, to protect the children, so it wouldn’t help us.

It’s also a good point that something may be initially fun and/or useful, but become filler just because there’s too much of it. I mean, heck, even a deep, thoughtful, plot-advancing conversation is filler if you have to keep going back and doing it over and over–not that I think this is the issue with DAI.

So yeah, that’s my input: a bright idea for package labeling that I don’t think is either necessary or likely. This is the kind of tip Big Business would LOVE to get. Unfortunately for them, they don’t read our blog.

Butch:

Well, that labeling would help me know exactly how much nudity to expect.

First, thanks magic voice, for pointing out Blackwall wasn’t like the other wardens. Foreshadowing!

But I had forgotten that Solas’ main fear was “dying alone.” Given that we now know what we now know, that makes me go “hmm.”

Hmmm.

What’s with that?

Feminina:

Yeees…good question. I guess taking a collection of other souls into his body is a pretty good way to make sure he doesn’t die alone. So his fear can reflect both in a sort of generally positive “I just want someone there to hold my hand as I breathe my last” way (themes of family, connection, etc.), and in a more negative “if I die I’m taking you all with me” way (turning those themes dark–so desperate for some sort of connection that he’ll harm others to maintain it). I could see Solas meaning it either or both ways, really.

Being a loner and an outsider was a huge part of his character in the game, so it’s interesting that this fear suggests that he’s not happy with this state of affairs, however much he scorns others and their company. He doesn’t like anybody (except spirits), but he doesn’t actually want to be all by himself either. The message that loneliness doesn’t make anybody happy, even the misanthropist weirdos of the world, certainly matches up with the overall themes we discussed.

Butch:

Or it’s sinister: I don’t want to die until I unleash all my evil-assed friends.

Oh, and Vivienne would up divine. And I have stuff to say re Sera, but I’m hungry.

Feminina:

Ha–I was going to send you that ‘ending explained’ link! Some good speculation there. Interestingly, it didn’t even occur to me to read Solas’ absorption of Mythal/Flemeth (or Mythal/Flemeth taking over Solas’ body) as treachery or an attack–I just took it as consensual, given that Flemeth went to the trouble of telling us a few scenes ago that a soul can’t possess someone without permission. Of course, in the larger picture she could obviously have been lying or mistaken, but during my playthrough, I just accepted the narrative.

Which means, from my interpretation, that Mythal (and possibly Flemeth if she still exists separate from Mythal) AND the Dread Wolf AND the Old God soul Flemeth took from Kieran are now all hanging out in Solas’ body. And possibly Solas’ own original soul, if he, like Flemeth, was not an old god to begin with, but merged with a soul at some point in a mortal life.

Must be getting crowded in there. Maybe that’s why he likes the fade so much…in theory, maybe they could all split up and wander around there?

So in the future….maybe they’re either all going to merge into one super-soul, or one of them is going to overpower and consumer all the rest, or they’re going to be on the lookout for suitable bodies to split up into, or…or…something interesting, that’s for sure.

Also interesting about the whispers from the well. That’s all fairly vague (and if your Warden was male, doesn’t even necessarily make sense, unless the word’s are different based on world-state, which is possible), but it’s definitely true that we know the Hero of Ferelden is off doing something, and that makes as much sense as anything.

As for the “Wings of Fire” or whatever trophy–basically, if you drink the Well instead of Morrigan, Morrigan doesn’t have the power to transform into a dragon to fight Corypheus’ dragon, so instead you visit the Altar of Mythal, talk to Flemeth, summon a dragon, fight it and defeat it but don’t kill it, and then IT fights Corypheus’ dragon for you in the final battle, instead of Morrigan in dragon shape. And you get that trophy for defeating it. So not really a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but that’s what that trophy is about.

Butch:

Ok, before we delve into lore, MY ending, at least, tied in very nicely to the more basic theme of family and belonging. But that involved Sera, like, a lot. As you were with Blackwall, how’d your game end? I mean, before the credits?

And who was divine for you?

And we gotta talk about the end of Coryphytits.

On to lore:

I was with you. I took the treachery as hanging around NOT MENTIONING HE GAVE THE ORB to Coryphytits (Sera). He betrayed US, for heaven’s sake. He was the problem all along. I knew he sucked.

Solas’ soul may well be really, really old, a la Flemeth. I did note the village he said he was from was just ruins. Maybe he wasn’t lying.

But here’s an aside….who/what was the wisdom spirit that his side quest was about? did that thing matter?

This will be something interesting in future, or very disappointing. I’ll go with interesting. After all, this was a great game. Though we can’t let the themey stuff get lost in the lore.

There’s also no doubt the Calling is not over for the Wardens. They’re setting that up as a thing. That’s really going to be a thing.

I supported Cassandra for Divine (Leliana freaked me the hell out with her “maybe we need to FORCE everyone to believe!!!!” idea), and that’s how it turned out. Blackwall and I were still sort of together, I guess, but he went off to become an actual Gray Warden to redeem himself, so I don’t know how that worked out as a long-distance relationship. It was rather vague. Everyone seemed pretty happy at the party, though, and we were on good terms, so who knows.

After the party and the credits, when I went back to kill the final dragon, a few companions had left. Blackwall vanished, and Dorian disappeared for a while and then came back. That, coupled with the fact that Solas was obviously gone, left me in a serious bind, because the last dragon I had to kill was a fire dragon, and Vivienne was my fire mage, so here I was with only one mage and the dragon immune to her specialty.

I spent some time crafting some serious fire-resistant armor and anti-dragon weapons, gave Vivienne an ice staff, and eventually managed it, but I was kind of annoyed, I must say. Solas was my ice mage! I could forgive him for being an ancient, malicious deity who was responsible for nearly destroying the world, but you do NOT abandon me when I need someone to fight a fire dragon! So next time we meet, it’s on.

And yes, regarding treachery, it’s very true, Solas going along all this time not letting on that he was the reason for the entire disaster–hole in the sky, Divine and hundreds of mages and templars dead, worldwide destruction from demon-shedding rifts, etc.–feels like a major betrayal. (Although he did give away the orb before he even met you, so is he betraying you personally?) The most charitable reading is that he intended one thing to happen, and it all went horribly wrong and something much worse happened…but at the very least, he knew he was RISKING untold destruction and millions of innocent lives, and that’s a pretty jerk move. I suppose he’s not the Dread Wolf for nothing.

I don’t know about the Spirit of Wisdom quest. Maybe just a kind of final straw for him, or a confirmation that his path was right?…one of his few true friends dead for no real reason (it’s not even as if they knew what they were doing) at the hands of these stupid mortals, so hell with them all? It’s interesting that there wasn’t any option to save it, so whatever we did, his experience was going to be one of loss. Your only influence is on how much he can lash out in the moment…and whether you let him lash out and kill the mages, or not, it doesn’t sound as if it changed anything in the end.

Maybe THAT’s the real message behind his personal quest: that you can’t really change his path or help him, he’s beyond your reach in significant ways, and you can only superficially influence him. He’s bigger than we are, in a very real sense, so honestly, what the hell could we expect to do that would make a meaningful difference to him personally? His soul is what it is, maybe, and while we had moments of something like friendship, there was always distance between us. The fact that we couldn’t save his friend is just a reminder for him of that distance: we can’t really be in his world, we can’t really touch the things he cares about, we can’t really help him.

That failure–though not our fault since success wasn’t an option–could have been a significant point for him in a way we never really saw.

Or maybe not, since we didn’t see it. Good speculation, though, right?

Butch:

See, shit, I told Leliana she’d be great, it SAID “support Leliana for divine” in that flashy way that shit flashes, and lost anyway. Wikied, and it seems that all through the game Leliana, Cassandra and Vivienne get “points” based on shit you do that you don’t even know are giving them points. It’s all part and parcel of the whole “Hey, man, there’s shit happening in the world that you aren’t privy to and don’t necessarily get” bit. You influence it all throughout, from Haven on. And I looked and damned if my Vivienne did, in fact, run away with it based on what I did.

So my last scene before the credits:

Party. Probably same as you. Then I go to my quarters, and Sera says stuff about sex, and there we are in quarters (clothed). She asks if I’m “still me,” and I get three conversation options that are all pretty much the same: “yes, and I love you.” They’re like “As long as you’re with me,” “Yes,” and “I always will be.” Pick one, say you love her, walk hand in hand out to the deck, Sera says “It really is beautiful, isn’t it?” Fade to black. (And then, on a black screen, Sera: “Let’s push the bed off the balcony. ***Sera laugh***” Credits.)

So after all that, the game ends on family and belonging. It ends, simply, with you holding hands with your lover, having fun, admiring the beauty of the world, just the two of you. It doesn’t even give you the choice of breaking up. Dammit, the real victory, the game says, is this. Is belonging. You’re holding hands. That’s the reward. Not sex, not awkward burlap. Love, and belonging. You did it. You won.

And DAMN that was a nice touch. I’m sorta surprised not everyone got something like that. It sure worked in my game.

Re: Solas leaving after the ending: HA! “Destroy the world if you must, but DON’T fuck with my trophies! Bastard.”

See, I didn’t bother to play further. I asked around about what people thought of Vivienne (not a popular move), smooched Sera one last time, then wiki, dinner, hockey.

Regarding Solas as the Dread Wolf, really, he STILL wanted the damn orb. He went back to look for it after the final battle, and was sad it was destroyed. Had he been remorseful, he’d have thought “You know? Orb thing, in retrospect, was a bad idea, what with the skyhole, end of the world, etc.” But no, he stuck with it.

And indeed, whether or not you let him kill the mages in his personal quest may be irrelevant. But who was the spirit?

Another cool thing: The last thing Coryphyous does: Pray. Here’s a whole game about what is divine. Does it matter if it’s real? Does it matter if the Gods or the saviors want to be there at all? All sorts of things about the interplay of truth and faith, and a lot saying that truth doesn’t matter, it’s just what people believe that matters.

Buuuuuuut: Corypheous’ last words: “I call upon you old Gods….if you are real…if you ever were real….come to me!” And, of course, they don’t. His last words are desperate, scared, doubting prayer. That doesn’t in any way work. So is he foresaken by real Gods? Or were they never real at all?

But nice touch ending the bad guy with a confused, scared prayer.

Tell ya, bioware’s still got it.

Also, Man, you gotta stop ending every brilliant though with “Or maybe not. Who knows?” Play your hand with authority, Femmy!

I think that shit was more obvious if you romanced him (who would do that?). He got very distant. Like he wanted contact but didn’t.

Feminina:

Interesting…so it’s not about who you SAY you support, it’s about what kind of Divine your actions have suggested you support. And in my case they just happened to match up, so I assumed that people were actually paying attention to what I said, whereas actually they were closely monitoring what I did. That’s actually kind of cool. I mean, a little annoying that you don’t realize it matters, but also…a lot of things in life you don’t realize matter until after the fact, so one could argue this is realistic in an interesting way that games usually aren’t…huh.

I did go to my quarters with Blackwall after the party, but we just got a fade to black, no real dialogue that sticks in my mind. It was more a “we’re together right now and that’s all we’re going to think about right now.”

Again, though, it’s cool that the ending you get depends on your actions and the relationships you’ve built and how you’ve maintained them. You had a long, serious relationship with Sera, and you’re still in it, and that mattered in the end and tied into an overall theme of connection and belonging, which is great. I had a reluctant, bumpy relationship with Blackwall and I’m maybe still in it but who knows, and it sort of mattered in the end but tied into the theme in another way, like, connection is important EVEN IF you don’t know it’s going to last. Belonging to something is so important that it’s worth it to seize even an imperfect chance at it.

I wonder what you get if you romanced no one (or Solas) and ended up by yourself? Even that can still be argued to tie back to the connection/family/belonging theme, because the fact that you don’t have something, doesn’t mean that thing isn’t important. An ending where you stand alone on your balcony and a silent tear trickles down your cheek (to be melodramatic) says “belonging is important” just as much as an ending where you’re happy with your lover.

Now if there are endings where you go to your room and say “finally, some privacy!–man, I hate people and wish I could be free of this whole damn institution” and chill out with a book, that does kind of undermines our theme. If I were dedicated, I’d go to YouTube to watch all the ending variations I could find, but…working. You do it.

Butch:

Yup, it’s complicated. Cuz I sure as shit didn’t support Vivienne on purpose. Indeed, when I got that in the epilogue, I actually said “What?” to the screen and thought it was a bug. I supported Leliana! I said. So I went to the wiki and no, no, the game was right. I DID support her, I just didn’t notice I was.

Which is kinda cool, cuz both player and PC are both rather overestimating both their power and their understanding of the situation. Kinda like Solas, Cole, Morrigan….

Hmm. Your ending was not as good.

Different sides of the same theme, though.

I suppose that devs sorta want you to play the things multiple times. Maybe then you can see those different sides of the same theme, and react to that. But I can’t be bothered. I’ll take my narrative and run.

Nope, not looking up endings. I’m going with “this is my game and that’s how it is.” Not my fault you didn’t pick the most interesting character to romance.

Feminina:

Interesting. Checking out that link, it looks as if I really bounced around, gave different people points at different times, but obviously ended up with most for Cassandra. Which I’m pleased with, I guess, since I was trying to support her and she still seems like the best candidate to me. Leliana had that murderous-zealot look in her eye there at the end, and Vivienne…she would have been interesting, I’d support her over Leliana, but she was a bit caught up in the past. Wanting to reinstate the circles just the way they were and so forth. Cassandra seemed like someone who valued the past, but recognized that parts of it aren’t worth carrying forward. Seems like a good combination.

I do respect “this is my game and that’s how it is.” It’s like taking the stats you roll up, you know? That’s how I played it, and yeah, I made some mistakes and might do some things differently if I were to do it over, but people make mistakes and can’t do them over and we live with them.

Certainly, in the absence of a spare 100 hours for another playthrough, I’m keeping the way I played DAI.

Butch:

Cool, though, that they started that stuff EARLY in the game, and much of it you didn’t even know what was what. Hell, a lot of it was before you even knew Leliana and Cassandra were up for the position.

Interesting.

I wonder, though, if the devs want us to do that. I mean, if the endings are subtly different in tone/theme (not just who’s hand you’re holding), then maybe they want us to have that experience of comparing/contrasting in game. Sure, it’s easy to be cynical and say those replay trophies are just so we can stay invested in it until the DLC hits, but maybe there’s more to it. They want us to replay so we can see the different facets of the theme.

Not going to do it, but do they want us to?

Feminina:

Yeah, seriously, you have no idea this choice is even going to be a thing, and yet you’re already starting to make it. And interesting that you can say “no, I never wanted this” about the ending, but…you’ve been boxing yourself into that corner for months of game time (and/or real time) without even noticing. Life is unfair!

I don’t know…do they want you to replay? Or do they just want players as a mass to play a game they’re satisfied with? If I write a bunch of cool storylines, do I want everyone to see and appreciate them all? Or is it enough if everyone gets one? Tough call.